“There have been racial barriers, and it has been challenging to be accepted as Japanese.”
That’s what a tearful Carolina Shiino said in impeccable Japanese after she was crowned Miss Japan on Monday.
The 26-year-old model, who was born in Ukraine, moved to Japan at the age of five and was raised in Nagoya.
She is the first naturalised Japanese citizen to win the pageant, but her victory has re-ignited a debate on what it means to be Japanese.
While some recognised her victory as a “sign of the times”, others have said she does not look like what a “Miss Japan” should.
She grew up in Japan. All her friends are Japanese. Her life experience is of Japanese society and culture. She’s been through it all. What is she if not Japanese? Get over it.
I am part Japanese myself and the language is literally my mother tongue, but when I go to Japan to visit family, I always feel alienated because I don’t look the part. Don’t get me wrong. People are very polite to foreigners, but you will always be a foreigner. Even when I spent a year at a Japanese elementary school, I felt this persistent sense of not belonging.
But maybe things are starting to change? I admittedly have not been back in a couple of decades. I hope so.
My neighbor who was born in Pakistan and moved to the USA in 3rd grade, and now has a kid going to school with mine, is more American than I’ll ever be tbh.
his moms brisket samosas are dope as fuck and ought to be enshrined in a immigrant fusion cookbook
Japan has had a long history of being insular, putting it lightly, so this is big regardless of how you look at it
If someone were to look up images of a Japanese person, they would be very confused to find pictures of a white person. Yes they are Japanese culturally, but not physically or genetically. These are what the pageants are about, not everything needs to be inclusive of all aspects. It ruins the intents of it.
It isn’t called a genetics pagent. Beauty is already subjective enough without layering your myopic view of race on top of it.
It becomes genetic when you bring race into it “miss” “Japanese/japan” “Ukraine/ukrainian” they also have to show knowledge of their culture, race, language, etc. the beauty is a tiny fraction of it. But let’s make it the largest part of our argument….
But hey, apparently I’m the myopic one….
Call it the beauty pageant of Japan if you don’t want to bring anything but beauty into it… not up to them, do it yourself if you want to put your culture on them.
If you want a racist pageant then you can make one yourself.
Yes, you are myopic here.
Well, according to whatever panel was judging this competition, she had all of those things. But you weren’t talking about that. You said she isn’t “physically or genetically” Japanese, and that that was what “pagents are about”.
Ah yes, the futile desperation to maintain “racial purity”, because that’s never turned out badly for anyone ever… 🙄🙄🙄
How well did that work out for Native Americans…? They were so overtaken they were forgotten lmfao.
Not everything needs to be whitewashed, just look at native Americans, they’ve already even forgotten and this happened to them. History repeats itself….
They can always go and make their own inclusive pageant, instead of the reverse happening in every country. Since they are more or less forced to be inclusive and give up their heritage so they aren’t protested by people who don’t understand.
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Removed, rule 5, and yeah, I’m removing the other comment too.
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
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Accusing mods of racism when you have a page long modlog of removed and banned content earns you another ban.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=422714
For the record, your comment was removed under the civility clause for “Thanks to wilfully ignorant asswipes such as yourself”
Don’t try to hide white washing by arguing someone is racist for pointing it out lmfao.
The racist is you, not me or the mod here.
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Have you considered maybe that the Japanese are nothing like the Native Americans, and that what’s happening in Japan has nothing to do with racism against the Japanese?
Right? They invoke the genocide of Native Americans to defend the idea of Japanese racial purity being threatened by a single beauty pageant contestant, and I’m the one whitewashing… 🤦♀️
If you whitewash their culture as well they will be. Of course it’s different… until it isn’t anymore because of whitewashing….
Removed, rule 5, and yeah, I’m removing the other comment too.
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!
ainudude has entered the chat.
What the heck are you talking about. Beauty pageants aren’t about ethnicity. This is farrrrr from the first time that a pageant winner is a different ethnicity than the predominant ethnicity of a country.
Yes everything gets whitewashed and entire culture gets forced out again.
Why is it that native Americans had to go and make their own pageant so they weren’t forgotten?
“Japanese” means something, unlike American. When you hear Japanese, you don’t think white person, same with (Native) American. See how I had to specify so you know which? Same thing is happening with these pageants.
Oh fucking get over yourself.
The Japanese are hardly an oppressed people, at least by outsiders. They’re a first world country. With their own customs and culture.
The only dangers to their identity have been those of their own societal making.
Japan’s native population has been in critical freefall for a long time not because of any white person interference, but because their culture has become increasingly incompatible with family life for a significant amount of their population. If you thought America had an out-of-whack work culture, your jaw would hit the floor when you see what salarymen and salarywomen over there go through.
It’s not like they’ve been pushed out by a colonial force with some manifest destiny bullshit. The problem here simply isn’t whitey.
Yet they are being forced to accept outside culture since they wouldn’t be “inclusive”….
It’s whitewashing and there’s nothing to get over, other than we need to stop pushing our cultures on others until there is nothing of their own left.
Nothing to do with oppression, but of course fallacies help to make your agenda.
They’re being forced, by nothing more than the mere reality of their situation, to accept outside culture because their societal failures have led to their own population death spiral.
No one forced their hand or made them take on such damaging traditions and policies. No one is forcing the Japanese to take on elements of other cultures.
Try doing a bit of research before spouting nonsense theories.
They are being “forced” to accept outside culture because their inside culture has led them to a demographic death spiral. Not by any action initiated by outsiders. If outsiders were capable of forcing Japanese culture to change there are plenty of other things that would be changing that aren’t.
They could always choose to continue following that spiral to oblivion, I suppose. Or they could reform the aspects of their culture that have led them there. Accepting immigration is one of the ways they could do that.
She’s culturally Japanese. Nothing is forced out.
Except for what is genetically and culturally identifiable as Japanese.
Whitewashing…
Whitewashing… you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
White washing means to attempt to change history to make something seem less bad than it actually was, or who someone was.
Do you mean cultural appropriation? Though saying it like that kinda damns your point of view.
If she was of African origin, would it be whitewashing?
There would have to be a term amalgamated, but by the essence of the definition, yes. You would be altering something in favor of another race/ethnicity.
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If Japan doesn’t want to go into a death spiral as it’s population shrinks they will need to get used to the idea of immigrants being common, and being a Japanese citizen is what makes you Japanese.
That’s how it works in America, but not every country is so progressive.
Half our country still struggles with that
You say you were born here, but where are you from?
I am very mixed race, including 18% native american and 24% west African (slave). That’s according to DNA analysis. According to my grandmother’s genealogy efforts, the only member to immigrate to the US after 1776 was Irish and he married the “creole” (white+black+native+???) plantation owners daughter. Resistance was futile. He was assimilated.
So most of my bloodline has been here since the start, 18% before that, but because I am not white and my features’ origins are hard to define, I get asked where I am from fairly often. I’ve been even told to go back to my country.
Racism and xenophobia are dumb.
The other option is “death spiral as its population shrinks”, I suppose there’s nothing stopping Japan from choosing that instead.
This is not progressive. It was meant specifically to end slavery.
The issue isn’t really where she was born - even if she had been born in Japan, she still wouldn’t be ethnically Japanese. The general idea in the USA seems to be that living in America is what makes someone an American, and this is a way of defining national identity that works well in an era of large-scale immigration. However, it’s not how people generally define their identity. For example, I was born in Ukraine and my ancestors all lived in Ukraine for centuries, but I don’t think of myself as Ukrainian and they didn’t think of themselves as Ukrainian; they identified themselves and were identified by their neighbors as members of a different ethnic group.
I’m not sure where I’m going with that - I empathize with how this woman must be hurt by the criticism her victory is receiving because I came to the USA when I was about as old as she was when she came to Japan and if I were rejected from the community of Americans then I wouldn’t have another community to go to, but I also empathize with people who think that being Japanese is about more than just living in Japan and following Japanese customs because I was raised to believe that about my own identity.
Yeah, unlike a melting pot such as the US, countries like Japan are relatively ethnically homogeneous, and no matter how fluent you are in the language or how long you’ve lived there, you’ll always be a gaijin (foreigner), especially if you look way different (i.e. western). Fortunately, I think as the newer generation slowly takes over, large-scale immigration nowadays is getting more accepted as the world becomes more interconnected.
were identified by their neighbors as members of a different ethnic group.
There’s simply nothing good that comes from this, except a comforting sense of superiority from any majority group, that is not necessarily deserved.
We have Amish here in the US, that have lived cloistered lives for centuries now, keeping to their own culture. But when you meet one out-and-about, you don’t necessarily immediately jump to “Amish”, even though they are pretty recognizable. They’re just accepted, as a normal part of American society in this area, that belongs. Their Amish identity is simply not very important, nothing important comes from focusing on it. Since they’re common, you just get used to them.
There’s simply nothing good that comes from this
Oh, it was certainly very bad for my ancestors, but the lesson there isn’t “It’s better to assimilate,” but rather “Even if you do everything to assimilate, your neighbors won’t accept you, so remember that you’re different. At least that way, you’ll be prepared.”
Since [the Amish are] common, you just get used to them.
I wouldn’t say that - IMO, since the Amish are very rare, they’re seen as an amusing curiosity rather than as any sort of threat. If they really were common, there probably would have been more hostility.
It’s regional. Your experiences wherever you live are not reflective of the experiences of people that live nearby to Amish communities, where they are not a rare or amusing curiosity. They’re just the people down the highway a bit.
However, it’s not how people generally define their identity. For example, I was born in Ukraine and my ancestors all lived in Ukraine for centuries, but I don’t think of myself as Ukrainian and they didn’t think of themselves as Ukrainian
I think this is kinda the point, that the way ethnicities define themselves are typically based on a misunderstanding of genetics and a bygone definition of race.
I for example am half Korean and half Czech, according to how both those ethnicities self identify I don’t really qualify for either. To my Korean family I’m a tall white guy who looks kinda Korean, To my Czech family I’m just a very big Korean dude.
I personally think that ethnicity and culture should be shared, and that gate keeping culture based on antiquated ideologies like race just perpetuates our worse tribal instincts.
Of course that could be some implicit biases coming out to play. If I believed that ethnic purity was a beneficial quality, I’d be in trouble.
To add, diversity is beneficial in basically all aspects of nature. A natural land that isn’t biodiverse is prone to disease and competition for resources. Purebred pets tend to be more prone to disease and complications than “mutts”. “Ethnic purity” is such a self centered and stupid virtue for someone to have in this day and age.
Furthermore, a lot of cultural traditions like food and music are meant to be shared with others, and locking yourself out of that because of some ass backwards view is a disservice to oneself.
Racists confuse the hell out of me
Culture is place-based. It’s about how the geography and food and local population and local religious practices shape you and it is constantly evolving because all of those things change over time. It is not genetic. As japan welcomes more immigrants those immigrants will indeed shift the culture in certain ways because there is a new group of people. Pageants are about cultural celebration, and Japan is celebrating their culture with this beautiful woman who calls it home.
Locking the thread… This is one of those stories that as soon as I saw it, my gut reaction was “Oh, no good will come from this.”
Lots of reports, overt racism, covert racism, comments removed, users banned…
Saving you from yourselves. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Buttttt, she no looky japaneseee.
Funny how ethic actors face the same kinds of issues.
Time for a bunch of westerners to fit their round peg in this square hole.
